The Scientist
by SylviaBronte
Summary: Tony's been through a lot of pain in his life, but none of that is comparable to finding the woman he loves in a psychiatric hospital. Especially when he knows that he was the one who drove her there. TW: Mentions of suicide attempts and self-injury.
1. Pale Green Walls

**Finally, I'm starting a new story. Finally! I started this one while I was on holiday in Tenerife, and I typed it up and made a few changes. I hope you all enjoy it!**

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She liked her room. It had four pale green walls, one window, two doors. One door led out onto the corridor, the other to her small bathroom. She wasn't allowed in there on her own anymore, and they had removed the lock after they found she couldn't be trusted. It was beyond her why they even had a lock on the bathroom door in the first place, not everybody was under surveillance and she was positive that most of the people in here would see that as an opportunity to commit suicide. The floor in her room was hard linoleum. It was always cold, but she liked that.

There was a bed, with a metal frame and a thin mattress. The pillow was hard, but that didn't bother her. She didn't always like to sleep in her bed, instead preferring to curl up in a ball with the side of her face pressing against the wall. At first, they tried to make her stay in her bed at night, but when it became apparent that she didn't really listen to much of what they said, they just stopped bothering her and let her sleep wherever she wanted.

The room was very bare, the only other thing in there was the wooden box that served as a home for her bird. It was made from what she suspected was pine, and lined with hay and sawdust, with a lid that slid on and off. On the one day that they had managed to coax her out of her room and go out into the garden area (it could hardly be referred to as a garden, as it was overrun with weeds), she had found a baby bird without its mother. After at least an hour of waiting, the mother didn't come, so she took the bird inside and made a nest with her blanket, feeding it remnants of the meals they brought for her. When an orderly found the bird and tried to take it from her, she screamed bloody murder until they agreed let her keep it. Later that day, they brought the box with the bedding already inside for the bird to stay in. It didn't really have a name like an ordinary pet would, she referred to it in her mind as Bird.

She was Jane Smith, patient 026492. They hadn't recognised her for who she really was, people rarely did nowadays, which was in her mind a good thing. She had cut off all her hair and dyed it engine oil black in a gas station bathroom, and over the last six months it had grown out to a bob, finishing just above her shoulders. The cheap black dye faded away completely after around three weeks or so, which she was thankful for, as black hair didn't exactly suit her. It was nice to have her strawberry blonde locks back again. Nobody knew who she was, and she wasn't in a position to tell them, so they named her Jane. That was who she was now, Jane Smith. The mute woman in Room 202 on the top floor.

She suspected that the top floor was where they put all the people who were like her, and worse. For the first two months, she was kept awake all night regardless of if she slept on her bed on the floor, as there was another woman a few rooms away who constantly screamed her throat raw. Every day, she would hear this woman screaming constantly, until her voice went hoarse and she simply shouted out nonsense instead. It didn't take her long to realise that she was absolutely insane, and it made her wonder why they were on the same floor. Was she at the point where she was grouped with the people orderlies referred to as 'screamers'? Had she really lost her mind?

The gossiping of the orderlies as they changed her sheets informed her that she had ended up killing herself, swallowing the stuffing inside her pillow and choking to death. It was definitely a gruesome way to die, so she decided not to listen anymore. She didn't really pay attention to the orderlies when they talked amongst themselves anyway, so she was used to blocking out their voices. Whenever one of them came into her room, she took her blanket and the bird box and curled up in the corner, watching them with empty blue eyes until they left again.

Despite the fact that the last thing she wanted to do was swallow her pillow and choke herself, she was envious of that woman. She had arrived at the hospital after driving her car into the lake, but being admitted hadn't stopped her. She would hit her head against the wall until she bled and blacked out, smash her bathroom mirror and slash at her wrists with the shards, and almost jumped out of her window before she was caught. She even tried hiding her medication to overdose for a while but they got wise to her, resorting to checking under her tongue and keeping her on camera at all times. Secretly, she thought that the camera was unnecessary, but she decided against saying anthing. She decided against speaking in general.

Sometimes she would look out of the window and wish she could fly away, floating in the clouds like the birds she saw every day. Her bird never learned to fly, which was one of the reasons why she never let it go - it wouldn't exactly survive on its own. She missed being able to stick her head out of the window and feel the cool breeze on her face, but they moved her to another room with iron bars behind the glass after she tried to jump out.

She was mute, but they would often pick up her soft mumbling on the micced up camera of her talking to her bird. They could always tell when she spoke, but she never did it around them, and they had never been able to make out any of what she said. After the first few times, they had tried to get her to talk to them, but had received the same blank look and the silence they had grown accustomed to with her.

It was never just orderlies that came into her room. Different doctors had come and gone over the months, and she was always seeing new faces, as they liked to show her off for reasons beyond her knowledge. She would sometimes get doctors from out of state coming to see her; they normally just talked to her (or at her) for a while, and left again soon after. She didn't know any names, but she nicknamed the regulars. There was Brown Beard (an overweight, bespectacled man with a beard), Leopard (a woman who always wore the same leopard-print bangle on her arm), and Magenta (a slightly younger woman with bright pink hair). She didn't particularly like any of them, though she chose to tolerate them. She had learned the hard way that they had to at least be tolerated.

She sat on her bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, and her blanket draped over her shoulders. The bird box was open, but she wasn't saying anything this time, watching with an expressionless face as the bird slept, gently brushing her fingertips over its feathers. The bird had warmed to her as if she were its mother, and had grown to love human contact. The ocean blue eyes that held a thousand secrets just watched the small creature, gazing listlessly at the tiny life she had fought to protect over the last two months.

Her short hair hung limply at her shoulders. She washed it around three times a week, and Leopard normally brushed it for her. She never protested, even when she pulled. Despite the fact that she really wasn't that into being touched anymore - particularly by men - the contact was always welcome. The time spent with Leopard wasn't unpleasant; she talked about her children a lot, which she liked. It was nice to hear someone talking about something other than her own problems. She would have rather gone without any human contact at all, but it kept them satisfied that she was at least slightly sane, so it was something she just put up with.

Her skin was pale, and she was noticeably thinner, though not quite dangerously so. It was always the same orderly that brought her food, and they would always stick around to make sure she didn't try to harm herself with the cutlery, which she thought was absolutely ridiculous. All she ever did was feed the bird as she went along, which wasn't really that big of an issue in her eyes. They brought appropriate food for the bird, though she still fed it tiny scraps from her own meals. It wasn't as though it mattered, she rarely cleared a plate.

A knock on the door shattered the silence, and a feeling that someone other than an orderly or a doctor was outside sent shivers down her spine. She retracted her hand from the box and slid the wooden lid into place, curling around it protectively as her eyes narrowed. There was someone new at the door. Probably just a doctor from out of state again, the last one had been from Ohio.

"Jane?" came Magenta's voice. "You have a visitor, he thinks he knows who you are."

_Who I am..._ she thought.

"Pepper?"

A familiar male voice echoed around the small room, causing her to tense up immediately. She held onto the box tightly, as though her life depended on it.

"Pepper, it's me. Tony."

-/-/-/-/-

He had been searching for her for six long months. Tony had successfully removed himself from the public eye, and had been constantly on the road, looking for her. A week after that fateful outburst, Tony had called her parents to ask how she was, only to discover that she wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere, nobody had seen or heard from her in days. He toyed with the idea of going to the press, making the search public, but decided against it. If anyone was going to find Pepper, it would be him. It would be his responsibility. Leaving a rather unwilling Rhodey in charge of everything, telling him to only contact him in the event of an emergency, he had left the Malibu mansion in an old beat-up van he bought cheaply - leaving in a flash sports car wouldn't exactly be appropriate, nor would it help him keep a low profile.

A lot of people didn't know who 'Pepper Potts' was, which wasn't really in his favour. She liked to avoid the public eye, and only accompanied Tony somewhere if it was on a date, or an important conference. Tony ended up losing count of the amount of times he described her, "strawberry blonde hair, bright blue eyes, freckles, about 115lb, just under six feet tall". He narrowed down his focus to hospitals when he ran out of places to search. Driving from town to town, state to state, he slept in the van every night and relied on pit stops for coffee to keep him alive.

He got the call when the van gave up on him in Nebraska. Tony was in the middle of kicking the damn thing and swearing so much he thought his mother would never forgive him when he heard his phone ringing in his pocket. At first, he had a mad hope that it was Pepper, but when he noticed the unknown number it made him even more anxious to answer.

They had heard about how Tony Stark was searching for someone, and they had a woman they were calling 'Jane Smith' who matched the description he was giving. They said that she hadn't responded to 'Pepper' or 'Virginia', but that wasn't important to him right now. What was important was that he had found her.

She was in a psychiatric hospital in the mountains of Colorado, but he had found her.

-/-/-/-/-

There were many words Tony had used to describe Pepper over the years. Beautiful, gorgeous, funny, sexy, and intelligent were among them. Suicidal was not. He sat and listened as they told him everything - drove her car into the lake, tried to slit her wrists with pieces of glass, nearly jumped out of the window...

"No!" he exclaimed. "Pepper isn't suicidal. She's... no. She loves life, her optimism pisses me off."

"Well, it's true." The woman had shocking pink hair, and bright green eyes. She was soft-spoken, barely living up to the 'bad-ass' image her pink hair seemed to conjure up. "She's behaved herself reasonably well for a while now, but we're still working on her issues with food."

"She's anorexic?" Tony choked out, paling.

"No." She shook her head. "Jane- sorry, Pepper doesn't eat a lot. She has about a third of her plate, half if we're lucky, and gives some to her bird."

"Pepper has a bird?" he questioned, curious. "I didn't think people were allowed to keep pets in... these places."

"They're not, ordinarily." she replied. "Normally, we find that animals can tamper with recovery. Patients get too involved with their care and it can be distracting to them. We let her keep the bird because we didn't really think it'd last long, and wouldn't end up being that much of a problem. We did try to take it from her, but she screamed the place down."

Tony just sat there, trying to process everything. Screaming? That wasn't like her. At all. "Am I allowed to see her?"

"It depends on how she reacts to you. We can open the door and see what she does, but if she panics then it won't be a good idea." she explained. "There's something else you should know, before you see her."

"What is it?" Tony asked warily, his anxiety rising.

"Well, she doesn't talk. She's been selectively mute since she arrived."

"Selectively?" he repeated. "Who's she talking to?"

"Her bird."

"Should have expected that, I guess." He ran his fingers through his thick hair, sighing heavily. "What does she say?"

"We don't know. Her room has a microphone, but we can't make out what she says. She's never spoken a word to any of us, only her bird, and only if she's alone in the room. She doesn't like to be touched, either - particularly by men. The only we've ever touched her has been to restrain her, and my colleague brushes her hair."

"Does she let her do that?"

The woman, Anna, her nametag read, nodded. "She does. It always has to be the same person - I tried once, and she wouldn't let me anywhere near her."

"Right." Tony said slowly, exhaling.

This was worse than he thought.

-/-/-/-/-

"Pepper, it's me. Tony."

She didn't respond, but she watched him like a hawk. She noticed how rough he looked - his eyes were bloodshot, he looked as though he hadn't shaved in weeks, and his clothes were pretty creased up. She could see a dark stain on his t-shirt, and wondered what it was. Pepper noticed the way he looked at her, noticed the rise and fall of his chest as he exhaled deeply, and took a step forward. His expression was unreadable. Her grip on the box tightened.

"Do you recognise him, Jane?" Magenta asked. She wondered why she still used the name they had given to her, rather than the name Tony had obviously provided.

Her icy blue eyes filled with tears and she looked away, hunching up her shoulders and resting her forehead against the wall. It wasn't like she was overly upset with him for finding her or anything, she was just a little surprised, if anything. She thought that she'd lost him for good. Yet here he was, standing in the doorway. He had found her. As the gentle murmurs of a quiet conversation reached her ears, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to prevent any more tears from falling. She'd expected to remain 'Jane Smith, patient 026492' for the rest of her life, but that clearly just wasn't meant to be.

Tony was here. He had found her.

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**I know that there are some unanswered questions, but things will be explained very soon. Please don't forget to review, I'd love some feedback! It only takes a minute, and it really makes my day.**


	2. The Worst of Sights

**I'm overwhelmed by the response to the first chapter! Thank you so much! That really means a lot to me. Here's the next chapter, I tried to get it done as fast as I could. I hope you all enjoy!**

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He was filling out paperwork. All the necessary paperwork to get her out of the hospital, he wanted her to come home. He was sat in her room, in a chair beside her bed, his forehead creased and his lips pursed in concentration. The lines added years to his face, but she thought that he looked considerably older than the last time she had seen him. Pepper put it down to stress. Tony was looking better than he had the previous day, she could tell that he'd showered and had a decent night's sleep for once. They thought of making him sleep in her room, which she hated the idea of, but he ended up staying in a vacant room. It was his own decision, and she was thankful that he thought of it. She didn't want to share a bedroom with him.

Magenta had been in the room with them for a while, mostly to keep an eye on how she reacted to him and prompt him a little with the paperwork, but when it seemed that she wasn't really reacting to him being in the room and that he'd gotten the hang of things, she left. They were now alone in the room together, which was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. She wasn't sure if the silene between them was a good or bad thing anymore; it was making things feel a lot more tense, but she wasn't sure if she wanted him to say anything to her. Pepper was sat in the corner, holding the bird box and keeping the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She hadn't opened the box since Tony entered the room, she didn't trust him with such a tiny, fragile creature. She knew the havoc he could wreak with only his hands, she knew what he was capable of, having seen it all first hand. Her eyes never left Tony, watching him with apprehension, as though she thought he would pounce on her at any second.

"I left Rhodey in charge of the company."

She jumped a little at the sudden break in the silence, holding the box a little tighter.

"He wasn't too pleased, but... he'll be glad to know you're safe, and gladder that he doesn't have to babysit for Stark Industries anymore." Tony chuckled a little, never looking up from the papers.

The strawberry blonde just stared at him blankly, without a flicker of emotion across her pale, gaunt face. Her eyes fell to the box every now and again, before settling back on him again. He kept talking, but she stopped listening to anything he was saying, covering her head with the blanket and trying to make herself seem as small as possible. Ever since she was a child, Pepper's way of coping with feeling threatened or afraid was to make herself feel as small as she possibly could, but in this case, it just wasn't working for her. She heard Tony sigh, clearly having noticed that she'd retreated into a protective ball, and the room fell silent again.

No, she didn't want to go home today.

Pepper glared moodily at the scars that were riddled up and down her forearms, as she sat and tried to figure out what the time was. They had woken her up at 8am as they did every morning, and she had used the bathroom about ten minutes later, accompanied by one of the orderlies. Part of her was irked that they still didn't trust her in there alone, even after they'd taken off the lock on the door, but another part of her had just stopped caring. They brought her breakfast at what they always said was half past, but she didn't eat any of it, simply giving some to her bird and disgarding the rest. Tony had come in about an hour later, and now here they were. He'd been in her room for about twenty minutes, at a rough guess, and she knew that she had a therapy session at about 10am, so he wouldn't be around her for much longer.

Surely enough, the heard the small scrape of his chair as he stood up, presumably having finished filling in all of the forms. Pepper expected him to just leave without another word, so she was caught off guard when he spoke.

"Your eyes are still the most beautiful shade of blue."

She looked up in surprise, lowering the blanket. Tony's eyes met hers, and they just stared at each other for a few seconds, before the strawberry blonde looked away again, feeling herself burning for all the wrong reasons under his constant gaze. She quickly turned her attention to the window with a wary glare, just hoping that he stopped soon, as she was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. She heard the wind outside, whistling through the trees and rustling the leaves and branches, and tried her best to focus on the swirling velvet grey scarves of fog outside. The sun could be seen, an incandescent pale circle that could have easily been mistaken for the moon, dulled by the misty tendrils.

She heard him sigh, heard his footsteps as he left the room, heard the click of the door when he closed it behind him.

Relief washed over her.

-/-/-/-

Tony frowned as he walked, deep in thought as he pondered the possibility that his comment had been a little too much for her. From her body language, it was clear as day that she didn't trust him - though that hardly came as a surprise to him. She didn't need to tell him with words, he just knew. It hurt like hell, knowing that the woman he loved the most no longer trusted him, and he wasn't even sure if there was anything he could do about it anymore. His thoughts were interrupted momentarily by a loud yell coming from another room, and it made him freeze in his tracks as everything began to sink in a little more. Pepper, _his_ Pepper, was being kept in a place full of people who were decidedly insane, and that was how they most likely viewed her: insane. It right at all, she was anything _but_ the words that labelled her in this God-awful place. She wasn't like them.

He was still taken aback and frankly scared by the change in Pepper's appearance. The body that had once lusted over was practically skeletal, her glowing skill was pale and dull, and she'd lost that twinkle in her eye that he had lived to see every day. Tony would have given anything to see the smallest smile, or hear even the smallest whispered word. He knew that the only chance he'd have for a long time was if he managed to blag his way into the room where they kept an eye on her with the security camera, or just have JARVIS hack into the mainframe and stream it directly to him. Although the software he used was pretty much undetectable, he wanted to stay in the good books of the doctors, and made the decision that it would be a brighter idea to get into the room.

His feet led him back to the room where Anna had first given him the paperwork, and he knocked on the door. A soft, 'Come in.' reached his ears, and he pushed the door open. She looked up, greeting him with a smile. The room was small and box-like, there was barely enough room for the desk, which was home to a potted plant, a photo frame turned towards her, and various papers. Tony sat down in the seat opposite her, and offered her the forms.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Stark." She placed them in front of her on the desk. "I'll review these right away, and we should have her ready to go home by the end of the day."

"That's great." he replied with a sincere smile, sighing a little. "Listen, I was wondering... would I be allowed to watch the security camera in Pepper's room? It's okay if I can't, but..."

"I'm sorry, but we don't really allow that." Anna answered with a sympathetic smile. "It's a frequent question, but unfortunately I have to say no." She then looked down at the papers briefly, before returning her attention to the man sitting before her. "It'll take me a while to go through all these, so you can go back to Pepper's room, if you like. Or you can just stay in your own room for a while. She has a therapy session in about half an hour, so you won't be able to stay in there for very long.

"No, no, that's okay." Tony rose to his feet, stretching a little. "I think I'll just go back to my room for a while. Thank you, though."

Anna smiled again, before making a start on looking through the papers. "Don't mention it."

He left the room quickly, closing the door behind him and trying his best not to slam it in his haste. As he walked briskly down the corridor, he pulled his phone from his pocket, speaking softly in case someone walked past and mistook him for one of the patients talking to themselves. It'd been a while since he asked JARVIS to do anything, in fact... he probably hadn't asked the AI to do anything in about four months, now that he thought about it. Tony sighed. As he spoke, his eyes darted around for any signs of life, and he kept the phone close to his mouth.

"JARVIS, you there?"

"Ready and waiting to serve, sir."

"Excellent."

Tony rounded the corner, now somewhere he actually recognised. He found his room in seconds, slipping inside and sitting down on the bed. His eyes scanned the roadmap of cracks and indents in the walls (the latter probably had something to do with its previous occupants, and the very thought made him shudder), and he looked up at the stain that was likely from damp on the ceiling, slightly yellowed. This room was in a pretty bad condition, worse than Pepper's, probably why they didn't have any patients in here. Instead, they'd give it to him. One of the only sane people in the entire building.

His six months on the road had been like nothing he had ever experienced before. There had been so many times throughout the somewhat harrowing journey that he had considered just packing it in and calling it a day, but the thought of his love and the blue eyes that haunted him spurred him on to keep going. Until Tony had reached Nebraska, every day had been the same. Waking up at around 6am, driving to the nearest rest stop to get a coffee, searching hospitals and wherever else he could think of, and then falling asleep in the back of the van at around midnight. He'd never turned the radio on, he probably hadn't heard any music since the day he left Malibu. Instead, he'd been left to study maps to find nearby hospitals, and struggle to maintain his will to go on as every hospital he went to told him that, no, they didn't have anybody matching the description he was giving. Tony's blue-eyed strawberry-blonde-haired freckled better half had been nowhere to be found, and it'd really frustrated him. He would often have a session where he just had to pull over and vent his frustrations. Sometimes he'd cry, sometimes he'd yell until he could barely form words anymore, and other times he would just sit there with a blank expression and let his thoughts overcome him.

_She obviously doesn't want to be found_, Rhodey had said just before Tony had left the mansion.

_No. Pepper needs to be found, and I'm going to be the one to do it_, had been his reply.

"Listen up, JARV. I need you to livestream the security camera footage of Room 212 directly to this phone. If there's anything you can't bypass, let me know. It shouldn't be too hard to get into, and you should be able to do it without getting noticed. Got that?"

"I'm working on it as we speak, sir."

-/-/-/-

She was still in the corner, and her blanket was wrapped around her like a shawl. Her room was cold today, but even if the temperature had been normal she would have been shivering. The strawberry blonde's eyes were wide with the kind of fear reserved only for the worst of sights, so much more than the decidedly bare room that faced her. She stared at the walls as though they were dripping blood, and she was breathing as though she'd just run a mile without stopping. As the concept of going home played on her mind more and more, Pepper was beginning to panic. She couldn't go home. Not yet. Maybe not ever. She still wasn't sure.

Her pale, shaking hand slid away the wooden lid, and her slender fingers grazed lightly over soft feathers. The creature looked up at her with dark, beady eyes. The only pair of eyes that she still trusted. The pale green walls that held her began to spin, and she was struggling to ignore the involuntary shivers running down her spine like sparks of electricity.

"I don't want to go home." she whispered. Her small, as of late underused voice cut through the silence. The strawberry blonde sighed shakily. "I really don't."

Something inside her snapped, and she was gone. She set the box down in the corner, and staggered to her feet.

"Don't you hear me?" she said quietly, looking up sharply. "I don't want to leave!" Suddenly, she was screaming her words, and all control was lost. Pepper was frantic, screaming and shouting like an abandoned child. Her fists pounded against the bed, and her head cracked into the wall as hard as her lack of strength allowed. Tears streamed down her face, and she cried even harder when her tears mixed with her blood, pouring out from a deep gash on her forehead. Her fists were in agonising pain, but she didn't stop. She couldn't stop.

-/-/-/-

Tony heard her screams before JARVIS even got into the cameras, and he ran for it. Those screams were Pepper's, undeniably so. He shoved past people who must have been orderlies, his brain failing to register any of them, knowing that they would only try to impede him getting to her. His shoulder roughly collided with her door, and he burst in. _Oh, God, this wasn't good_. She was covered in blood, continuing to scream and shout as though she hadn't even realised he was there. Maybe she really didn't know. The man winced in pain, practically feeling every hard blow she delivered to the wall.

"Pepper!" he yelled. "Stop it, you're hurting yourself!"

She stopped screaming in an instant, slowly turning around to look at him. Her body was tense, and still in an offensive stance. A icy chill washed over him when he saw her face. The smile of a maniac, what could only be described as a terrifyingly distorted grin.

"I'm not going home with you, Tony." Even her tone was like something from a horror movie, or a worst nightmare. But this was far from fiction, an awful dream coming to life before his fearful eyes. The grin never left her face.

He barely had time to duck as the chair he'd sat on earlier came hurtling towards him, hitting the wall with a loud bang. Tony staggered back in horror, frozen in his tracks as at least three burly orderlies ran in and grabbed hold of her. She shrieked, thrashing against them as Anna ran in only seconds later.

"Jane, I need you to calm down." The pink-haired woman's tone was remarkably calm, given the situation at hand. Pepper looked like she was about to say something, before her face softened, and she went limp. They let her fall to the floor as he watched on, slightly disbelieving of what he'd just seen. He went to approach her, but Anna held up a hand to stop him.

"Don't." she said simply. She then walked across the room, and picked up the box, sliding the lid over the startled bird. "Take her bird. She won't like it, but..." Her fingers ran through her hair, and she looked pretty dumb-founded herself. "I've never seen her behave like that. That's the most vocal she's ever been, and the first time she's ever spoken with another person in the same room."

"I..." Tony began, exhaled heavily. "I take it that she doesn't want to go home."

Anna shook her head slowly. "It would appear so."

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**A bit of a dramatic end! Please, let me know what you think. Reviews mean a lot to me! Until next time...**


	3. Small Steps

**AN: First of all, I'm so, _so_ sorry for the late update. It's been four or five months, I can't express how sorry I am! Real life has gotten in the way, and I seriously lost muse for fanfiction for a long time. I'll be honest, this probably isn't the best chapter I've put out. It gets a little rushed towards the end, but hopefully it's not too bad. It's also shorter than the previous two chapters. I can't say when I'll update it next, because I'm going to be away for a lot of the summer (I have a load of community projects, and I'm going abroad for a week on Saturday).**

**Also, news in writer!world. I finally finished my GCSE exams, so I'm completely done with school! I'm starting at college in September on a Performing Arts course, so that will keep me pretty busy. I'll just take things as they come, for now.**

**Final word - for those of you that are confused, I am Mikaela Powodzenia. A while ago I updated my fanfiction account, changed the name to SylviaBronte and changed the avatar.**

**I hope you enjoy this (very) late update!**

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Most people probably would have told Tony that he was insane by now, staying in a psychiatric hospital God knows how many miles away from home, especially after that outburst. He knew that most people would have fled after something like that, but he was different. Tony _loved_ her. Of course he did. Or, at least, that was what he was continuously telling himself. _You love her. This is the woman you love. You totally fucked things up, and you basically drove her here... but that doesn't change the fact that you love her._ He kept thinking the same three words, _you love her_, over and over again until he thought that they were the most used words in the entire history of his vocabulary.

He replayed the scene from the previous day over in his head until he could no longer bear it, and ended up just staring at the ceiling blankly. There were lots of little cracks and what he assumed were patches of damp, but nothing too bad. He'd slept in on the ground in a cave in the middle of Afghanistan for three months, this was nothing at all. Tony found himself wondering what was going on in Pepper's head right now, if she was okay (it was likely that she probably wasn't), what she was thinking (probably a less than flattering opinion about himself), and if she was physically hurt. When she hit the ground it'd looked pretty painful, and her head had already been bleeding when he found her. He thought about the scene again, and the way she'd screamed. Her twisted smile was burned into his memory.

Tony slid the lid off the little wooden box, and looked inside. A pair of small, beady eyes blinked up at him. He hadn't heard any sounds from Pepper's room, and JARVIS was monitoring the cameras, so if something happened he would be the first to know. The tiny bird flinched away from his touch, and he sighed. He'd never really been one to torture himself like this, but he knew that everything was his fault. He'd driven her here himself, he'd pushed her buttons and hadn't thought to check if she was alright. He hadn't cared.

The door cracked open, and Anna walked in. He looked up at her slowly, desperately trying to read her. She'd dyed her hair, it was now a bright shade of turquoise. She wondered, absently, if she dyed it often, but Tony knew that he had more important things to think about than how often Pepper's doctor changed the colour of her hair. He closed the box, noticing that the bird had become restless anyway. It probably didn't like being in the presence of a monster. The bright-haired woman sat down on the end of his bed, and at first, neither of them said anything to each other. She was seemingly trying to find a way in which to put her thoughts into words, and Tony was just waiting for confirmation that Pepper hadn't gotten any worse. Eventually, the silence was broken by his own outspoken musings.

"How is she?" was all he could think to ask, because what else could he say? _So, on a scale of one to ten, how mental is she? Have I made things worse? Is she pissed?_

"We're moving her back to her room later," Anna replied after a few seconds. "We moved her to a secure room after you left, her therapist thinks that she's a lot calmer. We've upped her Zoplicone doseage to see how she reacts to it."

"Can I see her?"

Anna shook her head. "No, not yet. You seem to trigger a bad reaction from her... it's not your fault, necessarily, but-"

"No, I know." Tony sighed. "I know what I did, it's fine."

-/-/-/-

Pepper despised of the room she was currently in. The walls had lost their soothing shade of green, the whole room was a maddening grey-white colour. To add insult to injury, they just so happened to be padded, so she was curious over why they hadn't put her in a straitjacket and thrown away the key. They told her that she was going to go back to her normal room later on, but they hadn't mentioned Tony, or her bird. The fact that Pepper didn't have her bird made her incredibly nervous, but they weren't trying to make her go home anymore, which made her feel a lot better.

A soft knock on the door reached her ears, and it opened slowly to reveal the woman Pepper had come to know as Leopard. She turned her head to look at her, slowly. The woman continued to smile brightly despite the blank look that greeted her, and she sat down a few feet away from her.

"Hello, Jane," she greeted cheerily. "Do you want me to take a look at your hair?"

Pepper didn't say anything, but she didn't protest, which was a signal to continue.

"Alice is going to be in her school recital, she told me last night." Leopard began, parting her hair at the back. It was something she'd never done before, but Pepper felt to exhausted to protest in any way. She knew what happened if she acted negatively, she'd seen and felt the consequences. A shudder ran through her as she remembered the way they'd roughly grabbed hold of her and fought to restrain her. "Red Riding Hood." She informed her, brushing the first half. "She's going to be a tree."

The strawberry blonde couldn't help the small smile. It didn't reach her eyes, but it was the first time she'd even been remotely close to it in months. As much as she felt vulnerable showing any sort of emotion, it almost felt good. Almost.

"I was in a Nativity recital when I was seven, I think." the woman continued, starting to plait her short hair. She pulled a little, but Pepper didn't care. "I was the Angel Gabriel, my older sister was Mary." She sighed. "I'd love to go and see her in the recital, but I don't think work hours would allow it."

"You should go." Pepper whispered. It was a tone so soft that it could barely be heard, but Leopard just managed to pick it up. She knew that she was surprised, because she paused and dropped the hairbrush. "She'll remember it for the rest of her life... memories stay. She'd want you to be a part of it."

As soon as she stopped speaking again, Pepper pulled away and shuffled into the corner, facing the wall, making it obvious that she didn't want any company anymore. She was picturing a child, but not the nurse's daughter. A different child. Dark, thick hair, and bright blue eyes. The image was so vivid that a hand flew to her mouth, and she choked on a sob.

-/-/-/-

They moved her back to proper room, after a nurse ran out telling everybody that Pepper had spoken to her. Tony had been overjoyed to know that she'd said something relatively positive, and the rest of the staff were practically jumping for joy. Not that he could blame them, it was probably the biggest breakthrough they'd seen in months. He still couldn't see her, and they hadn't managed to get her talking again since, but it was something. It was positive, she was getting better. Slowly, but surely, she was making progress. Small steps in the right direction.

It was late that night when Tony left his room, well past midnight. He'd barely eaten all day from both generally worrying about her, and the excitement that she'd finally spoken again. _Maybe she really can come home soon?_ was the main thought playing on his mind, constantly invading every other thought he had. Pepper was all he could think about, and all he currently cared about. His hunger ended up getting the better of him at around two or three in the morning, prompting him to quietly sneak out of his room.

He wondered where he would possibly get food from this late of night. It made sense that the cafeteria would be closed, and the kitchen would more than likely be locked. He turned on his heel, and was about to head down the corridor until he heard timid footsteps behind him. Tony whipped around to see who was behind him, expecting Anna or an orderly thinking he was a patient, but was met with someone he never thought he'd see.

Pepper stood outside her door. Her tiny, skeletal frame was wrapped loosely in a blanket, and her eyes were trained on him as if waiting for him to lash out. At first, he just stood and gaped at her. She went to turn back inside, but he held up a hand to stop her, and quickly rushed back into his room. He grabbed the wooden box, his heart hammering, and raced back out again.

"Your bird." Tony handed the box to her, his hands shaking a little. Cautiously, she took it from him, sliding back the lid. "I-I took care of it, I swear." Pepper gave the tiny creature a gentle stroke, and closed it. She turned and went back into her room, but looked back over her shoulder, as if inviting him to follow her. Intrigued, he complied, watching as she sat down on the bed. It was then that he noticed the stitches, dark and decidedly ugly, a stark contrast against her pale skin. Tony closed the door behind him, and approached her slowly, wary of how she was going to react to him.

Pepper lay down on the bed, watching him with blue eyes dulled by fatigue. Tony took a deep breath and reached out, brushing a piece of strawberry blonde hair out of her face. She didn't even flinch. He blinked slowly, stroking her hair, just looking into her eyes. He searched for any indication that she was feeling uncomfortable, or anxious, afraid, anything, and saw nothing. A few minutes passed, and he lay down.

They lay together for a while, neither of them speaking, just staring up at the ceiling. Tony turned to look at her when he felt her shift beside him. Her arm draped over his stomach, and her head came to rest in the crook of his neck. He could scarcely breathe.

"I..." he began, slowly. He swallowed hard. "I missed you."

Pepper didn't reply for a while, he assumed that she'd fallen asleep. For a while, the dark-haired man watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest, gently running his fingers up and down her arm. He felt nervous, being this close to her... after the intensity of the previous day, compared to this... it felt unreal.

He started to drift off, and just as his eyes closed, he heard a gentle,

"I missed you, too."

* * *

**Like I said, I'm not sure when I can update next, but I'll start working on the fourth chapter as soon as I can. Until next time! Hopefully you won't have to wait months on end for the next one...**


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